Saudi Shiites yesterday vowed to continue commemorations of Ashura, among the holiest occasions for their faith, after a gunman killed five people at one of their gatherings, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
Friday’s attack in the Qatif area of Eastern Province was the latest in a series of bombings and shootings over the past year linked to the Sunni group in Saudi Arabia.
A suspect with an automatic weapon “started to shoot randomly” at a Shiite place of worship in the Saihat area of Qatif city in the evening, a spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of the Interior said.
Five Saudis, including a woman, were killed and nine others were wounded, he said in a statement.
The ministry spokesman said that at about 7pm on Friday a suspect with an automatic weapon “started to shoot randomly” in a Shiite hall used for commemorations in the Saihat area of Qatif city.
Police intervened and opened fire, killing the suspect, the spokesman said, without giving details about the attacker.
State television earlier reported that the gunman was 20 years old.
A group calling itself Islamic State-Bahrain State said in a statement that one of its “soldiers,” Shughaa al-Dosari, “attacked a Shiite infidel temple with an automatic weapon” in Saihat.
It said that “infidels will not be safe in the island of Mohammed.”
A video, allegedly of the attack, posted on YouTube showed terrified people, among them many children, running frantically for cover inside the place of worship while gunshots could be heard.
Ali al-Bahrani, who witnessed the attack, said that the gunman was shooting at random as worshippers attended a sermon.
Jaafar al-Abbad, the uncle of the dead woman, Buthaina al-Abbad, 22, said she died a “martyr for the sake of her beliefs.”
“People are pouring in to congratulate her parents,” he said.
“She was about to graduate from university as a doctor. Now she is a martyr, and this is even better,” he added.
A witness to Friday’s attack, Ali al-Bahrani, told reporters that “a gunman began randomly shooting at people attending a sermon.”
Hussein al-Nemr, a Qatif resident, said the shooting was one of three incidents on Friday evening.
Nemr, speaking from Saihat, said a gunman had stolen a taxi in neighboring Dammam city, and a shooting also occurred at a mosque in Saihat, but nobody was injured there.
“We are not sure yet if they are linked to each other,” he told reporters, adding that the Islamic State group had warned of attacks.
Since the start of Ashura commemorations on Wednesday, Shiite security volunteers had been checking people at the entrances to houses of worship, Nemr said.
Residents of Dammam, where Shiites are not allowed to build places of worship, often come to Saihat to attend sermons which take place regularly during Ashura, said Nasema al-Sada, an activist from Eastern Province.
“We demand more protection and a law that would criminalize sectarianism,” Sada said. “We are living in a place made out of paper, which could catch fire any minute.”
Security has been tightened at Shiite facilities since May, when separate suicide bombings that targeted mosques killed 25 people.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State, which considers Shiites to be heretics.
Most Saudi Shiites, who are a minority in the kingdom, live in the oil-rich east and many complain of marginalization.
During Ashura last year, gunmen killed seven Shiite worshipers, including children, in the eastern town of Al-Dalwa.
The ministry said the unprecedented incident had links to the Islamic State group.
The Ashura commemorations — which peak late next week — mark the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, by the army of the Caliph Yazid in 680 AD.
That event lies at the heart of Islam’s divide into Shiite and Sunni sects.
The Islamic State, which has also targeted Saudi police, controls swathes of Iraq and Syria, where it has carried out widespread abuses.
Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Gulf neighbors last year joined a US-led military coalition that is bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq.
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